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Chicken Soup

A clear soup made with young chickens, stock, bread crumbs, cream, mace, salt, pepper, parsley, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Soup

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash the chickens well and cut them into pieces.

  2. Put the chicken pieces into a saucepan with the stock, salt, pepper, mace, parsley, and lemon rind.

  3. Cover the saucepan and simmer for 1 hour.

Make the stock and meat paste

  1. Remove the meat from the bones and return the bones to the pan, simmering for another hour.

  2. Cut the best pieces of meat into slices.

  3. Pound the remaining meat in a mortar with the soaked bread crumbs until smooth.

  4. Strain the stock, add the meat paste and chicken pieces, and bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in the cream and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat and flavour that form the body of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Bread crumbs
Soaked and pounded into the meat, they thicken the soup and give it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pound the meat with the bread crumbs until smooth. If the meat and soaked crumbs are not worked fully smooth, the paste stays lumpy and will not blend evenly into the stock, leaving a grainy texture in the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, cream, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, cream, pepper, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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